The cheery "Happy New Year!"s we wished upon each other just last week seem in retrospect, as the gloomy January rain-clouds sink upon us and plummeting temperatures are forecast, like rather hollow jokes. The atmosphere at Pilsdon is subdued. This week another guest had to leave having contravened the Golden Rule which naturally tended to dampen the group spirit. What with seven others including the baby currently away on holiday or on retreat, numbers are dipping into the low teens with some suppertimes only needing two tables laid up instead of the usual four. One bright spark who managed to remain undetected tried to liven things up this week by spiking our lunchtime pasta sauce with dried Scotch Bonnet chili peppers. It didn't work.
The general lack of hubbub can also be attributed to the fact that it was some of our more voluble personalities who happen to have left Pilsdon in recent months. Social gatherings have waned. Comedy Night and Craft Night have fallen by the wayside, with numbers even lower than usual at Activist Night and Film Night.
Still, life rolls on. We have to learn to take even greater pleasure in the little things when times are low: a large orange and brown butterfly skittering around the chapel at Compline; a surprisingly healthy crop of six-month-old parsnips; an unexpected sunny day for our weekly trip to Bridport; an offer of a made-to-measure wicker chair for my leaving gift from our resident basket-weaver; a Film Night viewing of a very decent BBC adaptation of the Christmas story called The Nativity.
The garden too gives satisfaction. All the veg planted under glass and plastic, the cabbage, beetroot, cauliflower, broad beans, spinach, lettuce, garlic and broccoli, is on the whole growing well and should be ready to eat in two or three months. 'Seed' potatoes, which are actually just small potatoes grown in disease-free areas, arrived last week which I have begun to 'chit' which rather wonderfully means Doing Absolutely Nothing apart from to leave them be on a window sill, right way up. Green stalks will then begin to protrude from their eyes, which could be taken straight from the plot of a cult horror B-movie. Perhaps I'll write the screenplay.
Not long ago on a clear night I found the Orion Nebula through my bedroom window and managed to get a close-up telescopic look at it. Despite it still looking like a large ghostly smudge lit by a few stars, the knowledge that this is the closest major star-factory to us yet its light still took 1500 years to get here made it an awe-inspiring moment. For me these glimpses of nature in the throes of creation, from vast clouds of broiling space dust condensing into new suns to the humble spud putting out its first shoots, help to make life something to be truly thankful for. Even when we're picking through our too-spicy-to-eat pasta.
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